Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians

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If you like this topic, you might also enjoy reading some extracts from Richard Sugg’s new collection of Victorian supernatural stories. Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires charts in vivid detail the largely forgotten history of European corpse medicine, when kings, ladies, gentlemen, priests and scientists prescribed, swallowed or wore human blood, flesh, bone, fat, brains and skin against epilepsy, bruising, wounds, sores, plague, cancer, gout and depression.

Mumia – of unknown origin, truth be told – was still available from 18 th century apothecaries, and ground up mummy for artist’s pigments, although no longer sold, is still around. I am the author of eleven books, including Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires (Routledge, 2011; 2nd edn 2015; Turkish translation 2018), Fairies: A Dangerous History (Reaktion, 2018) and The Real Vampires (Amberley, 2019). I think that's the key detail-- it gives a lot of good information, but at times, I feel like we aren't building toward anything more than the presentation of information.I learned a lot that you can make Candles out of human fat, that there's a complex chain of retail businesses in corpse medicine throughout the 12th to 19th century. Sugg refers to its use by John Donne in the 17th century, and supposes that he was better able to deal with the idea because he was (as a clergyman) able to embrace the pigeons as God’s creatures. My next book will be a groundbreaking study of ghosts and poltergeists, perhaps the strangest open secret of our times. Not everything that appears on this blog, including individual ideas or opinions, is necessarily endorsed by the Department of English Studies or by Durham University. Presented along with Sugg’s own interpretations of what the strange events, and the way they were perceived, might tell us both about the society of the.

This rich and authoritative account of beliefs about the medical efficacy of dead bodies is a fascinating, if gruesome, eye-opener. In its quest to understand the strange paradox of routine Christian cannibalism we move from the Catholic blood-drinking of the Eucharist, through the routine filth and discomfort of early modern bodies, and in to the potent, numinous source of corpse medicine’s ultimate power: the human soul itself. It features a blog on literature and books, book reviews, bookchat, podcasts and lectures on literature. The title recommends something more unusual, but in the end, this is really a work about Medicine and what Humans have used regarding saving peoples lives that would shock modern people.It survived well into the eighteenth century, and amongst the poor it lingered stubbornly on into the time of Queen Victoria. A certain urban squeamishness, possibly on behalf of the imagined modern reader (some 2012 Daily Mail readers apparently stoutly refused to believe that Good King Charles II used corpse medicine) pervades some of the accounts as the 20 th century is approached. John Henry, University of Edinburgh, notes that “Richard Sugg’s excellent book opens up a lost world of magic and medicine.

What I have not had in my own reading on the subject is the wealth of literary allusions and references that Sugg provides, and these, once the hurdle of florid literacy is overcome, are what make the book worth finishing.Or was it those who, in their determination to swallow flesh and blood and bone, threw cannibal trade networks across hundreds of miles of land and ocean[. Most of the bodies in question are dead, a fair number are not, and some are intriguingly ‘not very dead’. Villagers living in remote areas without much access to medicine or science couldn’t help but rely on superstition and paranoia about their neighbors dwelling over the next hill or living deep in the woods. And the range of sources is not confined merely to the English literature or to the English speaking world. It is quite clear from his ease with his array of authors that he is competent in his field, and he has produced a wide ranging and at times compelling book.